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Hello all, and happy Thursday!  

This week, I wanted to call attention to Mozilla’s new annual report they’re calling the Creep-O-Meter. In essence, the report analyzes historical data on consumer tech collected by Mozilla to determine the state of consumer digital privacy (spoilers: the findings were not great for consumers). 

 While there’s plenty to talk about regarding the report’s contents, what stood out to me is how this report demonstrates the impact of data privacy on business brands. 

It should come as no surprise that a data privacy platform like Osano cares about data privacy—and we think a lot about what makes other companies care about data privacy too. Obviously, nobody wants to get fined. Businesses would rather obey the law than violate it. It’s the ethical thing to do. But I think people also underestimate the power that data privacy has on their organization’s brand. 

 For Mozilla and other tech companies, respecting data privacy is very much a brand value (even if their actual data privacy practices don’t always align with that value).  

 These companies collect huge amounts of personal data, and they enable other companies to collect and process data in turn. Data and data privacy are core to the service they provide. Other businesses might say that’s all well and good for the Mozillas and Apples of the world, but they haven’t chosen to make data privacy part of their brand.  

The interesting thing this report highlights is that not choosing data privacy is also a brand value.  

Consider some of the major offenders identified in this report. They’re certainly not thrilled at being called out as being lax on data privacy. Those companies likely haven’t had a conversation about whether or not data privacy matters for their brand. And yet, reports like this one prove that others will consider your brand through the lens of data privacy, whether your brand book has a page dedicated to data privacy or not.  

Best, 

Arlo 

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